Source
r/HomeNetworking•
scwaffle

Building home network - some basic questions

Hey,

My cousin is renovating his 3 story house and already started running ethernet cable.
The CAT 7 cable is already run from the second story (where router and switch will be) through the walls and crimped to CAT 6a wall sockets. He used wiring type A.
His use case: some streaming, light gaming and web, 3-4 access points for mobile devices
 

As we are both very inexperienced I thought I'd ask for help:

  1. CAT 7 cable are compatible with CAT 6a wall sockets, right? Is this also the case for plugs?
  2. Wiring type A vs B makes no difference as long as you stay consistent, correct?
  3. He read somewhere that a patch panel would be a good idea. I don't think it's necessary. What's your opinion on this?
  4. Since there are only 10 wall sockets, should we just get a 16 port switch to connect it all together? Like this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GR9S6FN/
  5. Can we just extend the network by plugging another switch into the wall sockets or do we have to consider anything?

 

He still needs: Router, Switch, Access points, Ethernet plugs, Cable tester
Do we need to consider anything while shopping for these?

Thanks!

Posted Aug 3, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

15
ERIFNOMI•

I'll skip what I have to say about Cat7 because you already ran it so it's good late.

What I want to address is the patch panel. Yes, use a patch panel. The cable you ran throughout the house is solid core. It's not very flexible, and it's not meant to be. Copper work hardens so as you move it, it becomes harder and thus more brittle. Patch cables use many smaller strands of copper to help mitigate this a bit, but your structured wiring does not. Moving these cables around makes them more brittle until eventually they break. Do you want to redo these runs when that happens? No, of course not. So terminate them to a patch panel and then use patch cables between that and your switch. If a patch cable breaks, you're out a buck and 10 seconds of time. No big deal.

3
bbsittrr•

I'll skip what I have to say about Cat7 because you already ran it so it's good late.

Oof.

Bring on the strange interference problems from improperly grounded shielded cable.

2
megared17•
  1. Yes. Note that cat7 was WAY overkill. cat6 is sufficient for gigabit over 300+ ft links. But if its already in its fine. Hope he didn't spend too much extra $ on it.
  2. Correct, as long as both ends have the same pattern (568A or 568B) - originally you'd want to use a cable with one of each at either end to interconnect two like devices (either two switches, or two PC's) but nearly everything these days will automatically switch if needed. (its called auto-MDI/MDI-X)
  3. Might be nice to make it look clean and neat, not an absolutely necessity.
  4. Sure, that should work fine.
  5. Yes, you can always daisy chain one switch to another to get more ports on the LAN. I mean, if you interconnected dozens of them, you might start seeing some bottleneck issues, but that's pretty extreme.

edit: if he hasn't already got a plan for this, get some sort of adhesive labels to mark the ends of the cables, to be able to match them up with which room (and which port, if more than one port per room) -

I assume the ISP will be supplying a modem/gateway device, to which you plan on connecting the router to.

1
bbsittrr•

Yes. Note that cat7 was WAY overkill. cat6 is sufficient for gigabit over 300+ ft links. But if its already in its fine. Hope he didn't spend too much extra $ on it.

And hope it got grounded properly.

2
scwaffleOP•

Thanks for making things clear!

1